Vancouver Area Relocalisation Network

April 15th, 2008 Christopher Nowlin Why Culture is Critical to the Climate Change Debates

As scientists around the world scramble to find viable ways of reducing CO2 emissions from factory stacks and automobiles, few Western world leaders, if any, seriously recommend that states curb their rates of industrial production. The challenge is to produce and transport goods and services differently, but not to produce less goods and services – from chocolate bars, to packaged vacations, to carbon credits. Christopher Nowlin argues that this dominant political-economic state-of-mind – this fear of producing less – along with its social-psychological twin – an inclination to consume more – are symptomatic of a deeply materialistic culture that esteems aggrandizement, wealth, and accumulation over modesty, cultivation, and even health. For Nowlin, until this cultural ethos begins to change, the earnest race to meet Kyoto targets will remain so much tilting at windmills.

Christopher Nowlin has an M.A. (philosophy), an L.L.M., and a Ph.D. (criminology). He is a part-time writer, artist, teacher and criminal lawyer. His legal essays appear in such journals as The Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, Human Rights Quarterly, and the Criminal Law Quarterly. He is also the author of Judging Obscenity: A Critical History of Expert Evidence (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003). His most recent work is To See the Sky (Granville Island Publishing, 2008), a novel that satirizes the troublesome lengths to which culturally restless North Americans will go to be entertained.

Alice MacKay Room from 7:30 to 9:30 PM of the Central Branch of the Vancouver Public Library (350 West Georgia). Admission is Free.